Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize)

by Saul Bellow

  “Put away that paper,” I said. “For God’s sake, don’t quote my big ideas at me. If there’s one thing I can’t take today, it’s that.”

  It was really very easy for me to generate great thoughts of this sort. Instead of regretting this glib weakness with me, Thaxter envied it. He longed to be a member of the intelligentsia, to stand in the pantheon and to make a Major Statement like Albert Schweitzer or Arthur Koestler or Sartre or Wittgenstein. He didn’t see why I distrusted this. I was too grand; too snobbish, even, he said, sharply resentful. But there it was, I simply did not wish to be a leader of the world intelligentsia. Humboldt had pursued it with all his might. He believed in victorious analysis, he preferred “ideas” to poetry, he was prepared to give up the universe itself for the subworld of higher cultural values.

  “Anyway,” said Thaxter, “you should go around Chicago like Restif de la Bretonne in the streets of Paris and write a chronicle. It would be sensational.”

  “Thaxter, I want to talk to you about The Ark. You and I were going to give a new impulse to the mental life of the country and outdo the American Mercury and The Dial, or the Revista de Occidente, and so on. We discussed and planned it for years. I’ve spent a pot of money on it. I’ve paid all the bills for two and a half years. Now where is The Ark? I think you’re a great editor, a born editor, and I believe in you. We announced our magazine and people sent in material. We’ve been sitting on their manuscripts for ages, I’ve gotten bitter letters and even threats. You’ve made me the fall guy. They all blame me, and they all quote you. You’ve set yourself up as a Citrine expert and interpret me all over the place—how I function, how little I understand women, all the weaknesses of my character. I don’t take that too hard. I’d be glad though, if you didn’t interpret me quite so much. And the words you put into my mouth—that X is a moron, or Y is an imbecile. I have no prejudices against X or Y. The one who’s out to get ‘em is you.”

  “Frankly, Charles, the reason why our first number isn’t out is that you sent me so much anthroposophical material. You’re no fool so there must be something to anthroposophy. But for God’s sake, we can’t come out with all this stuff about the soul.”

  “Why not? People talk about the psyche, why not the soul?”

  “Psyche is scientific,” said Thaxter. “You have to accustom people gradually to these terms of yours.”

  I said, “Why did you buy such a huge supply of paper?”

  “I wanted to be ready to publish five issues in succession without worrying about supplies. Besides, we got a good buy.”

  “Where are all these tons of paper now?”

  “In the warehouse. But I don’t think that it’s The Ark that bothers you. It’s really Denise that’s eating at you, the courts and the dollars and all that grief and harassment.”

  “No, that’s not what it is,” I said. “Sometimes I’m grateful to Denise. You think I should be like Restif de la Bretonne, in the streets? Well, if Denise weren’t suing me, I’d never get out of the house. Because of her I have to go downtown. It keeps me in touch with the facts of life. It’s been positively enlightening.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, I realize how universal the desire to injure your fellow man is. I guess it’s the same in the democracies as in dictatorships. Only here the government of laws and lawyers puts a palisade up. They can injure you a lot, make your life hideous, but they can’t actually do you in.”

  “Your love of education really does you credit, Charles. No kidding. I can tell you after a friendship of twenty years,” said Thaxter. “Your character is a very peculiar one but there is a certain—I don’t know what to call it—dignity that you do have. If you say soul and I say psyche, you have your reason for it, probably. You probably do have a soul, Charles. And it’s a pretty startling fact about anyone.”

  “You have one yourself. Anyway, I think we had better give up our plan to publish The Ark and liquidate our assets remaining if any.”

  “Now, Charles, don’t be hasty. We can straighten this business out very easily. We’re almost there.”

  “I can’t put any more money into it. I’m not doing well, financially.”

  “You can’t compare your situation to mine,” said Thaxter. “I’ve been wiped out in California.”

  “How bad is it there?”

  “Well, I’ve kept your obligations down to a minimum. You promised to pay Blossom her salary. Don’t you remember Blossom, the secretary? You met her in September?”

  “My obligations? In September we agreed to lay Blossom off.”

  “Ah, but she was the only one who really knew how to operate all the IBM machinery.”

  “But the machinery was never operated.”

  “That wasn’t her fault. We were prepared. I was ready to go at any time.”

  “What you mean, really, is that you’re too grand a personage to do without a staff.”

  “Have a heart, Charles. Just after you left, her husband was killed in a car crash. You wouldn’t want me to fire her at such a time. I know your heart, whatever else, Charles. So I took it on myself to interpret your attitude. It’s only fifteen hundred bucks. There is actually another thing I must mention, the lumber bill for the wing we started.”

  “I didn’t tell you to build the wing. I was dead against it.”

  “Why, we agreed there was to be a separate office. You didn’t expect me to bring all of that editorial confusion into my house.”

  “I definitely said I’d have no part of it. I warned you even, that if you dug that big hole next to your house you’d undermine the foundations.”

  “Well, it isn’t very serious,” said Thaxter. “The lumber company can damn well dismantle it all and take back their wood. Now, as for the slip-up between banks—I’m damn sorry about that, but it was not my fault. The payment from the Banco Am-brosiano di Milano was delayed. It’s these damn bureaucracies! Besides, it’s just anarchy and chaos now in Italy. Anyway, you have my check. ...”

  “I have not.”

  “You haven’t? It’s got to be in the mail. Postal service is outrageous. It was my last installment of twelve hundred dollars to the Palo Alto Trust. They had already closed me out. They owe you twelve hundred.”

  “Is it possible that they never received it? Maybe it was sent out from Italy by dolphin.”

  He did not smile. The moment was solemn. We were speaking, after all, of his money. “Those California crumbs were supposed to reissue it and send you their cashier’s check.”

  “Maybe the Banco Ambrosiano’s check hasn’t cleared yet,” I said.

  “Now, then,” he took a legal pad from his attaché case. “I’ve worked out a schedule to repay the money you lost. You must have the original cost of the stock. I absolutely insist. I believe you bought it at four hundred. You overpaid, you know, it’s way down now. However, that’s not your fault. Let’s say that when you posted it for me it was worth eighteen thousand. Nor will I forget the dividends.”

  “You don’t have to do dividends, Thaxter.”

  “No, I insist. It’s easy enough to find out what sort of dividend IBM is paying. You send me the figure and I’ll send you the check.”

  “In five years you paid off less than one thousand dollars on this loan. You kept up the interest payments and little else.”

  “The interest rate was out of sight.”

  “In five years you reduced the amount of the principal by two hundred dollars a year.”

  “The exact figures don’t come to me now,” said Thaxter. “But I know that the bank will owe you something after it sells the stock.”

  “IBM is now under two hundred a share. The bank gets hurt, too. Not that I care what happens to banks.”

  But Thaxter was now busy explaining how he would return the money, dividends and all, over a five-year period. The split black pupils of his long grape-green eyes moved over the figures. He was going to do the whole thing handsomely, with dignity, aristocratically, fully sincere, shirk
ing no part of his obligation to a friend. I could see that he entirely meant what he said. But I also knew that this elaborate plan to do right by me would be, in his mind, tantamount to doing right. These long yellow sheets from the legal pad filled with figures, these generous terms of repayment, the care for detail, the expressions of friendship, settled our business fully and forever. This was magically it.

  “It’s a good idea to be scrupulously precise with you in these petty deals. To you the small sums are more important than big ones. What sometimes surprises me is that you and I should be fooling around with trifles. You could make any amount of money. You don’t know your own resources. Odd, isn’t it? You could turn a crank and money would fall into your lap.”

  “What crank?” I said.

  “You could go to a publisher with a project and name your own advance.”

  “I’ve already taken big advances.”

  “Peanuts. You could get lots more. I’ve come up with some ideas myself. For starters you and I could do that cultural Baedeker I’m always after you about, a guide for educated Americans who go to Europe and get tired of shopping for Florentine leather and Irish linen. They’re fed up with the thundering herd of common rubbernecks. Are these cultivated Americans in Vienna, for instance? In our guide they can find lists of research institutes to visit, small libraries, private collections, chamber-music groups, the names of cafés and restaurants where one can meet mathematicians or fiddlers, and there would be listings of the addresses of poets, painters, psychologists, and so on. Visit their studios and labs. Have conversations with them.”

  “You might as well bring over a firing squad and shoot all these poets dead as put such information into the hands of culture-vulture tourists.”

  “There isn’t a ministry of tourism in Europe that wouldn’t get excited by this. They’d all cooperate fully. They might even kick in some money. Charlie, we could do this for every country in Europe, for all major cities as well as the capitals. This idea is worth a million dollars to you and me. I would take charge of the organization and research. I’d do most of the work. You’d cover atmospheric stuff and ideas. We’ll need a staff for the details. We could start in London and move on to Paris and Vienna and Rome. Say the word and I’ll go to one of the big houses. Your name will pull down an advance of two hundred and fifty thousand. We split it two ways and your worries are over.”

  “Paris and Vienna! Why not Montevideo and Bogota? There’s just as much culture there. Why are you sailing and not flying to Europe?”

  “It’s my favorite way to travel, deeply restful One of my old mother’s remaining pleasures in life is to arrange these trips for her only child. She’s done more, this time. The Brazilian football champions are touring Europe, and she knows I love football. I mean superb football. So she’s wangled me tickets for four matches. Besides, I have business reasons for going. And I want to see some of my children.”

  I refrained from asking how he could travel first class on the France when he was dead broke. Asking got me nowhere. I never succeeded in assimilating his explanations. I did remember being told, however, that the velvet suit with a blue silk scarf knotted in the Ronald Colman manner made perfectly acceptable evening wear. In fact the black-tie millionaires looked tacky by comparison. And women adored Thaxter. One evening during his last crossing an old Texas lady, if you could believe him, dropped a chamois sack full of gems into his lap, under the tablecloth. He discreetly passed them back to her. He would not service rich old Texas frumps, he told me. Not even those who were magnanimous in Oriental or Renaissance style. Because after all, he continued, this was a big gesture suitable to a big ocean and a big character. But he was remarkably dignified, virtuous, and faithful to his wife—to all his wives. He was warmly devoted to his extended family, the many children he had had by several women. If he didn’t make a Major Statement he would at least leave his genetic stamp upon the world.

  “If I had no cash, I’d ask my mother to put me in steerage. How much do you tip when you get off the France in Le Havre?” I asked him.

  “I give the chief steward five bucks.”

  “You’re lucky to leave the boat alive.”

  “Perfectly adequate,” said Thaxter. “They bully the American rich and despise them for their cowardice and ignorance.”

  He told me now, “My business abroad is with an international consortium of publishers for whom I’m developing a certain idea. Originally, I got it from you, Charlie, but you won’t remember. You said how interesting it would be to go around the world interviewing a lot of second-, third-, and fourth-rank dictators—the General Amins, the Qaddafis, and all that breed.”

  “They’d have you drowned in their fishpond if they thought you were going to call them third-rate.”

  “Don’t be silly, I’d never do such a thing. They’re leaders of the developing world. But it’s actually a fascinating subject. These shabby foreign-student-bohemians a few years ago, future petty blackmailers, now they’re threatening the great nations, or formerly great nations, with ruin. Dignified world leaders are sucking up to them.”

  “What makes you think they’ll talk to you?” I said.

  “They’re dying to see somebody like me. They’re longing for a touch of the big time, and I have impeccable credentials. They all want to hear about Oxford and Cambridge and New York and the London season, and discuss Karl Marx and Sartre. If they want to play golf or tennis or ping-pong, I can do all of that. To prepare myself for writing these articles I’ve been reading some good things to get the right tone—Marx on Louis Napoleon is wonderful. I’ve also looked into Suetonius and Saint-Simon and Proust. Incidentally, there’s going to be an international poets’ congress in Taiwan. I may cover that. You have to keep your ear to the ground.”

  “Whenever I try that I get nothing but a dirty ear,” I said.

  “Who knows, I may get to interview Chiang Kai-shek before he kicks off.”

  “I can’t imagine that he has anything to tell you.”

  “Oh, I can take care of that,” said Thaxter.

  “How about getting out of this office?” I said.

  “Why don’t you, for once, go along with me and do the thing my style. Not to overprotect. Let the interesting thing happen. How bad can it be? We can talk just as well here as anywhere. Tell me what’s going on personally, what’s with you?”

  Whenever Thaxter and I met we had at least one intimate conversation. I spoke freely to him and let myself go. In spite of his eccentric nonsense, and my own, there was a bond between us. I was able to talk to Thaxter. At times I told myself that talking to him was as good for me as psychoanalysis. Over the years, the cost had been about the same. Thaxter could elicit what I was really thinking. A more serious learned friend like Richard Durnwald would not listen when I tried to discuss the ideas of Rudolf Steiner. “Nonsense!” he said. “Simply nonsense! I’ve looked into that.” In the learned world anthroposophy was not respectable. Durnwald dismissed the subject sharply because he wished to protect his esteem for me. But Thaxter said, “What is this Consciousness Soul, and how do you explain the theory that our bones are crystallized out of the cosmos itself?”

  “I’m glad you asked me that,” I said. But before I could begin I saw Cantabile approaching. No, he didn’t approach, he descended on us in a peculiar way, as if he weren’t using the floor with its carpeting but had found some other material basis.

  “Let me borrow this,” he said, and took up the black dude hat with the swerving brim. “All right,” he said, promotional and tense. “Get up, Charlie. Let’s go and visit the man.” He gave my body a rough lift. Thaxter also rose from the orange loveseat but Cantabile pushed him down again and said, “Not you. One at a time.” He took me with him to the presidential door. There, he paused. “Look,” he said, “you let me do the talking. It’s a special situation.”

  “This is one more of your original productions, I see. But no money is going to change hands.”

  “Oh, I
wouldn’t really have done that to you. Who else but a guy in bad trouble would give you three for two? You saw the item in the paper, hey?”

  “I certainly did,” I said. “And what if I hadn’t?”

  “I wouldn’t let you get hurt. You passed my test. We’re friends. Come meet the guy anyway. I figure it’s like your duty to examine American society from White House to Skid Row. Now all I want you to do is stand still while I say a few words. You were a terrific straight man yesterday. There was no harm in that, was there?” He belted my coat tightly as he spoke and put Thaxter’s hat on my head. The door to Stronson’s office opened before I could get away.

  The financier was standing beside his desk, one of those deep executive desks of the Mussolini type. The picture in the paper was misleading in one respect only—I had expected a bigger man. Stronson was a fat boy, his hair light brown and his face sallow. In build he resembled Billy Srole. Brown curls covered his short neck. The impression he made was not agreeable. There was something buttocky about his cheeks. He wore a tur-tleneck shirt, and swinging ornaments, chains, charms hung on his chest. The pageboy bob gave him a pig-in-a-wig appearance. Platform shoes increased his height.

  Cantabile had brought me here to threaten this man. “Take a good look at my associate, Stronson,” he said. “He’s the one I told you about. Study him. You’ll see him again. He’ll catch up with you. In a restaurant, in a garage, in a movie, in an elevator.” To me he said, “That’s all. Go wait outside.” He faced me toward the door.